The wife of L.Ron
Hubbard, 40, founder of the Dianetics Mental Health Movement, filed suit
for divorce today, charging he is suffering from a mental ailment. Mrs.
Sara Northrup Hubbard, 25, said "competent medical advisers"
had examined her 40-year-old husband and concluded he was "hopelessly
insane" and should be placed in a private sanitarium for "psychiatric
observation." She said doctors told her her husband was suffering
from a mental ailment "known as paranoid schizophrenia."

Mrs. Hubbard also
charged he subjected her to "systematic torture" by beating
and strangling her and denying her sleep. Her suit said Hubbard once told
her he didn`t want to be married and suggested that if she really loved
him, she would kill herself because a divorce would "hurt his reputation."

Mrs. Hubbard described
her husband`s dianetics research foundation as his "alter ego"
and said the institution did more than $1,000,000 business last year.

When informed of
the doctors` recommendation that he be placed in a mental institution,
Hubbard took their 13-month-old daughter, Alexis, from Mrs. Hubbard`s
apartment and went into hiding, the suit charged.

The wife also said
Hubbard told her he was unmarried when they were wed Aug. 10, 1946, at
Chestertown, Md., but it was not until December, 1947, that he divorced
a former wife, Mrs. Margaret Grubb Hubbard, at Port Orchard, Wash. Mrs.
Hubbard asked $500,000 damages to compensate for the loss of "the
golden years of a woman`s life" and an annulment of their marriage
if the court finds she never was legally marriedto the dianetics founder.